Fresh from the sewing machine!

I've had this pile of flannels that I got a few years back from my mother for a project that never was made reality and now I felt I just had to try and make something out of these poor forgotten pieces.  So I made a baby rag quilt and gosh what a fun project it was! It took only a day and it was so easy to make.  There was an adorable Beatrice Potter fabric in there so those got to be bigger pieces of 20cm. It ended up being 90x90cm and in the photo it's been washed once.

The Baby Rag Quilt:

So easy to make and the result so cuddly that I just had to make my very first order from http://www.fatquartershop.com/ for some Christmas charm packs & some flannel for backing so I could make a cuddly couch quilt big enough for us to use. I'll share more about this once the fabric arrives from the US. I'm so excited about this, charm packs seem soooo convenient and I've never used pre-cut fabric before ^^

Monet's Water Lilies

Monet is one of my favorite painters of all times and as many of you know he made a lot of beautiful  impressionist paintings of the Water Lilies in his garden. These paintings have always given me great peace and the very first "real" (meaning bigger then for the cat's) quilt I made was greatly inspired by these paintings. It's a bargello and I simply call it "Water Lilies", the contrasting fabric is actually water lilies.

I'm sorry for the so and so quality photo, this was taken by a friend at the Quilters Retreat I attended when I made it. I'll take a better photo one of these days and show you. I don't know if you can tell but I spent a small fortune on the border and backside, it's all the same section of a quite expensive fabric that I just had to have and built the quit around sort of. I quilted it in spots only by making little hearts on every other square, I did this since I had no idea how to quilt and didn't want to ruin it, still don't really but I'm getting there. ^^ 

I was so happy and tired in this photo, my first "real" quilt!

A couple of  Monet's many Water Lily paintings, pictures are borrowed from Wikipedia. 

Change in direction

So since I realize my attention span is to short to have my blog revolve around just one of my many interests I've decided to reroute and start blogging about whatever is catching my fancy at the moment in time. Lately it's been quilting and I've been doing a lot of it this summer. It's just so versatile and I love fabrics.

I'll at some point rename and redesign my blog but for now I'll just try and catch whatever lonely, neglected reader I have left up on what I've been doing lately. =)

My quilt in the post below is now finished, I've named it "Crazy Rainforest" and it fits a single bed perfectly. It got it's name as the colors where screaming "Rainforest!" to me and I simply had to applique (my first applique ^^) a Poison Dart Frog on an Azalea leaf in the bottom left corner to really give it a rainforest feel. 

"Crazy Rainforest" Front

 

"Crazy Rainforest" Back

And since I had some spare squares over from making the front, I decided to not let them go to waste and instead make a somewhat less boring the usual backside for it, and it's actually so nice one can almost call it "two quilts in one" =)

I've been quilting and quilting

So as I tend to go from my hobbies back and forth depending on what mood I'm in I through I'd show you one of my other great passions, namely creating quilts.

So lately this quilt top has been keeping me occupied, it's in some crazy fabrics I bought and most people look slightly sick when they look at it but I just love them, they make me smile very time I look at it. Now I'm just waiting for the summer when I can borrow my mothers machine and quilt  and finish it.

 

Delicate Blue

So I wanted a somewhat loosely hanging bracelet to combine with the blue and white one I posted earlier and this is what I came up with, a simple "katarinafläta" with a really nice padded ribbon. As the bracelet is loose and the backside might be visible from time I choose a ribbon that had crazy colors striped on the backside. So should the backside be visible, it doesn't matter as it's fancy there too =)

I'll update the post with pictures of the backside later, forgot to photograph it...

Military Green Elegance

Here I have a just over 1,5cm wide bracelet that together with yesterdays bracelet really shows the versatility of a normal three strand braid. In the middle braid I've folded the edges over instead of just straitening them, which gives this interesting look.

It's set on white lambskin and has a traditional reindeer antler button. Sadly the sun washed out the color of the pewter thread a little, it's a rich military green.

Spring Temptation!

Life has been very busy for me since I last wrote and I haven't had any time to spend on my Sami Jewelery, and therefor the blog hasn't been updated in a long time. Hopefully this can change now as I've more free time and I've gotten back into crafting.

First out I have an in my eyes lovely white and light blue springtime creation. It's a basic three strand braid, but to mix it up a little it has two strands of three pewter threads and the last strand a single, light blue pewter strand. It creates a stunning effect and on the white lambskin it goes beautifully with a pair of washed out jeans shorts and a white top =)

Turquoise Temptation

Turquoise is a tricky color, if used right it can be stunning, if overdone, it's terrible I think so I decided to do a rather wide white edge to balance this fairly wide, turquoise four strand bracelet. If you think the bracelets like in this case seem to have bumpy and uneven leather edges - it's because they've never been worn. Once you wear them they will flatten out and adapt to be round and the edges will become nice and even thanks to the pressure and your body heat. The skin is cut with quilting rotary cutter and ruler so it's always perfectly even thanks to that.

Introducing - Pearl Silk

I've wanted to try this material for a while and when I was making a bracelet for my dear friend Sandra (check out her blogg here) I figured it would be a good time to do so. She wanted a simple pink bracelet and here's what we came up with: Simple three strand braid with the beautifully shining pearl silk in between the pewter threads on cerise lamb skin. Beautiful but so subtle with the white silk thread nestled in there.

Tutorial - Macramé

I promised a while back to make a macrame "how to", and here it is. You need a "calf" which is the thread/threads or piece of skin in the middle of the macramé braid (the calf is the thing that determines how long the braid will become) and two strands of wired pewter thread. It's rather hard to tell how much pewter you'll need since it depends on the width of the calf and your technique but a basic guide is to make the pewter threads at least 4 times longer then the calf.

Since the macramé braid really want to twirl around it's center you need to straighten it continually during the braiding if you don't want to make for example a necklace where the twisting around the center can be really pretty. Then you just turn the braid over every 8 or so repetitions of steps 1-6.

How to make a macrame braid:
1. Arrange one pewter thread on each side of the calf.
2. Take the right thread and lift it over the calf.
3. Take the left thread and place if over the right thread, still on the left side of the calf.
4. Take the left thread and place it under the calf.
5. Continue up through the loop created between the left thread and the calf.
6. Tighten the threads and continue from step 1.

And the end result in this case is this bracelet:

To finish up the bracelet with a button closure, please see this tutorial: Tutorial - Simple Katarina Bracelet

You can also make beautiful versions of this with a thicker calf and double strands of tin threads, like this.

To see more about this bracelet, you can read this post. 

If you make your own Sami Bracelet or anything from a pattern or tutorial of mine - I'd love if you add it to my Facebook Group and thereby share it with me and the world so we all can enjoy it and be inspired by it.  And don't hesitate to tag me if you post on instagram @pink_pony_design